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Sorry somehow I deleted my other post when editing
Thanks for your reply, it helps me think things through.. Here are some thoughts.
The node and the economic demand aren't separate actors.
I'm arguing they are separate. Suppose Coinbase shut down their node tomorrow and read a block explorer instead. Same demand, same customers, same ability to reject payments, same leverage over which rules you and I run. Nothing about their economic weight changes. The only thing they lose is their own protection (ie verification). If the leverage survives turning the node off, the leverage was never in the node.
It is signalled by being willing to trade for coins.
Willingness to trade signals demand for the emergent ledger, the venue where coins move. I say emergent because although each individual node derives the ledger, the venue emerges from every node arriving at the same result independently. The nodes agree in what they derived, it isn't an aggregation of economic weight.
But the energy analogy actually works the other way. Accumulated proof of work is read by the protocol: every node measures chainwork and uses it to select the best chain. Proof of work leaves a trace but demand leaves no trace anywhere in validation. Yes, demand makes the system work, but demand exists between people, and the emergent ledger is what they demand. It enters the protocol nowhere.
You don't list rejecting payments as one of the methods, but it is hugely important.
Rejecting a payment doesn't require a node. Merchants do it through custodians and explorers. When I refuse a payment, and when Coinbase does it, the mechanism is identical: it's a property of being someone others want to trade with, not of the software. What the node adds is self-verification as opposed to trusted. The node protects the actor, it doesn't project their weight.
An economic node isn't defined by how many coins they have, it is defined by how many coins they want.
Demand determines which ledger is worth having. It doesn't alter what any node computes. Economic actors who run nodes certainly exist, and their demand shapes which software people choose to run. What doesn't exist is a node whose validation carries more weight than another's. If Coinbase changed their rules and no one followed, they wouldn't take the ledger with them; they'd simply compute themselves out of the venue their demand depends on.
Thanks again.
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I disagree. An economic node is someone who wants to buy or trade for coins that follow certain rules. The way they check that the coins people offer them are following the rules is by running their node. The node and the economic demand aren't separate actors.
It is signalled by be willing to trade for coins. If no one wants the coin no one cares about the protocol. To say that this is not a part of the Bitcoin protocol is similar to saying that there is nowhere in the Bitcoin protocol for energy/electricity. Even though Bitcoin doesn't care or even know how many watts were uses to compute a block header, the watts are entirely necessary for the protocol.
Economic weight certainly has sway! An economic actor can reject payments that do not follow the rules of what they see as Bitcoin. You don't list rejecting payments as one of the methods, but it is hugely important. It doesn't matter whether there is a single source of rules to modify, all that matters is that an economic node can exert pressure on the rules other people use by demanding payment that only follows certain rules. If you want what they have you must play by their rules.
An economic node isn't defined by how many coins they have, it is defined by how many coins they want.